FDA Reverses Course on Melafind

Remember that a couple of months ago I wrote a piece about FDA overregulation, applied to the particular case of Melafind, a handheld computer vision system intended to help dermatologists decide which suspicious skin lesions should be biopsied for potential melanoma a system for assessing. The FDA’s original response to Melafind had been to deem it  “not approvable,” saying that MelaFind “puts the health of the public at risk.”

In my piece I analyzed why the FDA had unreasonable and contradictory expectations for Melafind. I then testified before a Congressional subcommittee on the subject.

Well, the FDA has surprisingly changed its mind. From the WSJ today:

Doctors in the coming months are likely to have a new tool to diagnose the deadly skin cancer melanoma, after the Food and Drug Administration reversed its earlier decision and said the MelaFind device was “approvable,” pending some final negotiations.

The FDA cleared the path for approval in a letter it sent to Mela Sciences Inc. Thursday night. The letter hasn’t previously been disclosed.

More to follow.

Bad Decade for Male College Grads

For years I’ve been tracking the decline in the real earnings of college-educated workers. Now, with the latest income statistics, we can see just what the decade of the 2000s has wrought.

In terms of real earnings, male college graduates were absolutely pounded, taking a 9.7% decline in real pay from 2000-2010 (that’s bachelor’s only). Meanwhile female college grads saw no decline at all in real earnings. (we’re looking here at the real mean earnings of full-time workers 25 years and over).

For every educational category, the same pattern holds: Males doing worse than females in terms of change in real earnings. This is not directly related to the sharper job loss for men, since this data covers only full-time workers. However, it does provide corroborating evidence that the labor market seems to have moved against male-dominated industries and occupations, affecting the college educated as well as workers with only high school diplomas.

This is obviously not universal, given the high demand for computer and tech jobs, which tend to be male dominated. For example, 80% of computer software engineers are male. which should be a plus for male wages. But the ‘tech effect’ seems to be overpowered by the ‘health-education-effect’, since health and education occupations, which have done well over the past decade, are for the most part are disproportionately female.

Obama Believes High Productivity Growth Story

I’ve been saying all along that Obama’s economic  policy was heavily influenced by the apparent high productivity growth figures  (see my lengthy post from March 2011 here ). However, I didn’t realize that the problem stemmed directly from the President.  According to Ron Suskind’s new book  (taking the excerpt from Brad DeLong’s blog),  Obama’s advisers were distressed that the President appeared to believe that high productivity growth was the main cause of high unemployment.

If Obama felt that 10 percent unemployment was the product of sound, productivity-driven decisions by American business, then short-term government measures to spur hiring were not only futile but unwise .

This explains an awful lot about the Administration’s unwillingness to tackle the job problem.  What makes this a tragedy is that much of the measured productivity ‘gains’ are actually driven by shifts to lower-cost suppliers overseas (see here).

 

Pirate Party vs Tea Party

I see that the Pirate Party has won seats in a German election, with an agenda including loosening of copyrights and patents, a stronger right to privacy, and  more transparency in government.

A friend asked me a fun question: What would happen if the Pirate Party debated the Tea Party?  The mind boggles.

Hamilton Advocates Countercyclical Regulatory Policy

James Hamilton asks What could America be good at?  and considers the impact of regulations:

… if new regulations cause someone to lose their job or kill a new project that would have been hiring, the regulations are making a direct contribution to our cyclical problems, and are significantly more costly than if the same regulations had been implemented when the economy was operating at full employment.

Hamilton’s major concern is regulations that affect our ability to take advantage of natural resources, but it applies to all regulations. He then goes on to say:

Obviously what we need to do is weigh the costs of regulation against the benefits. Just because the costs are higher in a recession, that does not mean that new regulations during a recession are always a bad idea. But I do believe Americans need to acknowledge that, both because of the current economic weakness, and because of the longer-run challenge in finding a basis for future economic growth and current-account balance, we are poorer than we used to be. A challenge of this magnitude needs to be approached with some humility about just what we should be willing to do to get back on track.

Just the argument that I have made for countercyclical regulatory policy (see here and here).   In periods of economic weakness, we have learned how to change our monetary and fiscal policy in order to stimulate the economy, cutting interest rates and running deficits that would be unthinkable in normal times. We should consider using the very powerful regulatory apparatus of the government in the same way.

Can the California Legislature Really Be Serious?

So let me get this straight.   The California economy is a mess:   Private sector jobs  in the state are  down 8% since  2007 (the national average is down  5.5%) . But the state legislature has time to do something like this?

“Gov. Brown vetoes ski helmet, phone fine bills”

Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday smacked down what he called overbearing and expensive proposals for state regulations by vetoing bills that would require that kids wear helmets when on ski slopes and increase fines for people who talk on cell phones or text while driving.

<snip>

In his veto message accompanying the helmet bill, SB105 introduced by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, Brown appeared to side with GOP critics who had characterized the measure as “nanny government.”

Brown, a Democrat, wrote, “While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet, I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state. Not every human problem deserves a law.”

<snip>

A bill aimed at getting drivers off their cell phones also fell under Brown’s veto pen. The measure would have increased the base fines for texting or talking on a cell phone while driving by $50 on the first offense and $100 on subsequent offenses. The measure would have brought the total penalty to $328 for the first offense and $528 for subsequent offenses. It also would have applied to bicyclists, but with lower penalties.

Brown said that was too much. In explaining his veto of SB28, he wrote, “I certainly support discouraging cell phone use while driving a car, but not ratcheting up the penalties as prescribed by this bill. For people of ordinary means, current fines and penalty assessments should be sufficient deterrent.”

Or is there something here that I’m missing?

Some occupations that have grown since 2007

Yes, despite the deep, deep troubles in the labor market, some occupations have grown since the recession started.

Surprisingly, farm, fishing and forestry occupations have seen 12.7% job growth since 2007, the most of any broad occupational category. These gains are probably being driven by the 30% increase in farm prices over the past four years, which has encouraged agricultural expansion.

Number two on the list is the category of computer and mathematical occupations, including programmers and computer software engineers. Basically, it pays to be riding the Internet/mobile boom.

Number three is healthcare practitioners and technical occupations, with a 7.7% gain. This is the highly educated part of the health care workforce, including doctors, registered nurses, medical technicians and the like. Note that healthcare support occupations–such as health aides and other less-educated workers—had a much smaller gain. Being educated is better.

Fourth is legal occupations. Now, I’m not sure of this one, because no one would say that the market for lawyers is stronger. However, many of these lawyers could be self-employed at relatively low incomes.

Three Industries That Continue to Add Jobs

Is this the moment where the balance of power finally shifts to Internet-related employment?

After this morning’s job report, I thought I’d run graphs of three industries where job growth seems healthy.  Over the past year, jobs in electronic shopping establishments are up 11% (the zigs and zags come from holiday employment).  Jobs in “internet publishing, broadcasting and web search portal” establishments are up 20%. Employment in computer systems design, programming and related is up 5%, but that’s off a much larger base (please excuse the funky formatting…my power is still out).

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